As we honor the brave souls who fought for freedom this Memorial weekend, let us not forget: the battlefield has shifted, but the war continues.
It no longer wears camouflage or carries a gun. Today, it cloaks itself in algorithms, infrastructure, surveillance, automation, and the language of progress.
The technocratic movement, sold as innovation, often functions as silent conquest. Behind the gloss of smart cities, UBI, and AI agents lies a deeper architecture of control: coded systems that shape thought, behavior, access, and identity.
These are not neutral tools. They are instruments of governance, designed by the few and deployed on the many. And the many are not equal.
For non-white citizens, especially those already targeted by centuries of systemic oppression, the shift to digital governance often compounds inequality. The promise of personalization is too often a disguise for profiling.
Data becomes destiny. And those already on the margins find the margins moving further away.
This is not freedom. This is a new matrix of dependency.
The freedom fighters we honor this weekend did not die so that systems of power could rebrand themselves as efficiency. They resisted domination in all its forms… seen and unseen.
The question now is: can we? Can we see the patterns that echo through time? Can we name the systems, past and present, that demand obedience in exchange for inclusion? Can we honor their legacy not just with memory, but with action?
Personal sovereignty is the new frontier.
It lives not only in protest but in perception. In questioning the default. In refusing the seductive script of convenience over consciousness.
This weekend, let’s remember not just the dead, but the living. Those who still resist. Those building new ways of seeing, being, and liberating.
The freedom to think, to feel, to refuse, to imagine otherwise… that, too, is worth dying for. And worth living for.
Open your eyes. Open your heart. Guard your soul.
This is a spiritual war.
Darshana Patel
NOAGB | Notes of a Ghostbuster
@TurnYourION (Substack & YouTube)
